


for you and i to make it, it'd be a good story

by 152glasslippers



Series: you know that you got me [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-space arc, Pre-Relationship, Reunion Fic, Season 5 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 04:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13516467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: Robbie was standing underneath an old pickup, his back to the door. Every muscle in her body relaxed at the sight of him. The tightness that had settled in her chest since she’d spotted the Charger on surveillance pulled taut and then snapped, let go. The gray of his uniform blurred, and she cast her eyes to the ceiling and let out a shaky breath, blinking the tears out of her eyes.Post-space arc. Robbie returns to this dimension to find the team gone and Shield nonexistent. He heads back to LA and his old life: his day job, his night job, and taking care of Gabe. After the team makes it back to the past and saves the future, Daisy goes looking for him.





	for you and i to make it, it'd be a good story

**Author's Note:**

> Basically? A self-indulgent reunion fic because I just want Robbie back so damn bad. Part 1 of 3.

Minus a few different cars in the lot, Canelo’s looked exactly like it had the last time she’d been there, all those months ago.

A lifetime ago.

She wondered if this was how it felt coming back home after you’d grown up and moved away. Nothing has changed, but everything feels different. Because of you. You’ve changed.

A man standing next to a van that could have been the twin of her old one spotted her across the yard, squinting his eyes against the sun.

“Don’t I know you?”

He did. It was the same man who’d made her coffee while she waited for Robbie that first day. Canelo himself. She mentally crossed her fingers that he was remembering her from that day and not recognizing her from the hundreds of papers that had splashed her picture across their front pages.

She closed the distance between them, stopping a few feet in front of him.

“Yeah, I’m an old friend of Robbie’s.”

She watched the memory dawn on his face. His smile was easy, open.

“That’s right. Arcade girl.”

Daisy smiled back at him. She never had given him a name, and by some miracle, he’d never asked.

“Robbie working today?”

Canelo gestured with his head behind him. “Sure. He’s in the garage.”

“Any chance he’s due for a break?”

Canelo laughed. “Yeah, we can make that happen.”

He turned, waving her forward, and she followed him into the garage. She told herself it was the change in temperature, the cool air trapped in the space by the concrete floors and the concrete walls that sent a shiver down her spine. Not anticipation. Not nerves.

Robbie was standing underneath an old pickup, his back to the door. Every muscle in her body relaxed at the sight of him. The tightness that had settled in her chest since she’d spotted the Charger on surveillance pulled taut and then snapped, let go. The gray of his uniform blurred, and she cast her eyes to the ceiling and let out a shaky breath, blinking the tears out of her eyes.

Canelo didn’t pay her any attention, already yelling across the open space.

“Hey, Robbie! You’ve got an old friend here to see you.”

Robbie froze for a fraction of a second. His shoulders dropped, a line of tension running across his back. Bracing himself. Unnoticeable to anyone who didn’t know to look for it.

He turned around, and she watched his entire body go still.

“Robbie Reyes,” she said into the silence, and it might as well have been the first time they came face to face in daylight. Except this time, Robbie’s face broke out into a grin, the biggest smile she’d ever seen from him.

“It’s been a minute,” he said.

“It has,” she answered carefully. She didn’t trust herself to say more. Her eyes were watering again and her cheeks felt warm. It was more than relief. It was happiness.

It was that damn smile.

Canelo interrupted their staring contest.

“Why don’t you take your friend and grab some coffee in the office? The truck’ll keep.”

“Yeah.” Robbie grabbed a rag from the tool chest next to him to clean his hands, then made his way over to them. “Thanks, boss.”

Daisy smiled at Canelo one more time, a silent thank you, then followed Robbie back out of the garage.

They didn’t say anything to each other on the way to the office, walking side by side, some unspoken agreement that everything they had to say was better said with a closed door between them and the rest of the world.

Robbie shut the door behind them and turned to face her.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

It was hard to say whether he meant when he left, or when he’d come back and found her gone.

“I was gonna say.” It was their thing now, and she kept her voice light, matched the humor in his tone, but it was the kind of humor you used because it was the only thing left. Everything else was too painful.

“Where were you?”

She sighed. “A better question would be _when_ was I.” He didn’t say anything, just waited for her to keep going. “Post-apocalyptic future where the earth was blown to bits and all of humanity was trapped on a space station controlled by aliens breeding and selling Inhumans.”

Robbie’s only reaction was to raise an eyebrow.

“And I thought the places I went to were bad.”

She’d almost forgotten how hard it was to rattle him. He hadn’t even blinked the first time she’d used her powers or when he’d found out about AIDA. He just…accepted.

She guessed that was what happened when you’d lived what he’d lived, seen what he’d seen. Everything was possible.

“When did you get back?” he asked.

“Three weeks ago.” She felt almost ashamed to admit it, that she hadn’t been able to look for him before now. “Had to do the whole prevent-the-end-of-the-world thing. Took me a few days to find you, track down the Charger on street cams. You get it back from another Shield facility?”

“Yeah.” He hesitated, but he didn’t look away. He was never the one to look away. “I looked for you. When I couldn’t find you, I thought maybe you were hiding out—I saw the papers, the headlines…”

She nodded. “Talbot. The Daisy bot.”

“You never resurfaced, though, even when the story went straight, and I thought something worse might have happened. Guess it did,” he finished, his voice low.

“But not the worst.”

She didn’t have to say what the worst would have been. They both knew.

But there was a new worst to be afraid of, taking up space in the back of her mind, the thing that had been strung so tight in her chest: that she could have never seen him again.

“How’s Gabe?” she said, just to have something to say, just so she wouldn’t keep thinking about permanent goodbyes.

Robbie cracked another smile and his eyes lit up. “He’s good. Too smart for his own good, but…”

Daisy returned his smile. “Sounds about right.” She paused. “I’m sorry I couldn’t look out for him.”

Robbie shook his head, small, dismissive. “If you saved the future, you more than made good on that promise.”

She smiled again, briefly, but it fizzled out in the silence that followed. She knew what he was going to ask next. They’d avoided it as long as they could. The look in Robbie’s eyes tightened.

“Why’d you come looking for me?”

The tension was back in his shoulders, but it was different this time. It wasn’t defensive; he wasn’t preparing for a fight. He was anxious. Wary. And maybe, miraculously, hopeful. Hoping against hope. Like there was one answer she could give that he didn’t have to be scared of.

Her tongue felt heavy with all the reasons she could give him.

Because she wanted to. Because every day that they’d been back and she couldn’t look for him, the question of where he was and whether he was back too had rubbed raw at her brain. Because up until Robin told them otherwise, she’d half believed he might be the key to getting them home. Because he’d have incinerated that blue bitch like she was kindling. Or chained her up while Daisy quaked her to pieces.

Because she’d wished, at least once a day, that he’d just show up, walking through space and time through his own fiery doorway. Because when she was enslaved in Kasius’s opulent prison, she’d thought of him, trapped by the Rider, always a passenger—a prisoner—in that other place.

Because she was selfish enough to want him there with her in a future where the world had ended, just so she could be with him again.

Because she missed him.

She didn’t say any of it. It was too much, too soon. It wouldn’t be fair.

And the straight answer was the one that wouldn’t hurt him. They didn’t need him to take someone out, to save the day or throw himself into danger, to send himself back to another world. Nothing like that.

“Shield’s a mess. In pieces. There’s not many of us, and we can’t go public. Coulson’s trying to figure out what allies we have left.”

Something shifted behind Robbie’s eyes, too quick for her to read.

“You know the Rider doesn’t help unless he gets something out of it.”

He was looking at her more intently now, his eyes poring into hers, each word deliberate. He wasn’t trying to scare her. If anything, he seemed scared _for_ her.

“I know,” she assured him. “Only break the glass in case of emergency.”

His eyes searched hers for another second, and then he nodded. “Yeah.”

It was a heavy _yeah_ , a confirmation of her evaluation and an agreement to help if they needed him. The tension drained out of him, leaving behind a concern she still couldn’t fathom.

“So,” she said hesitantly, his worry making her worry. “Think you might be able to swing by for a visit after work?”

Robbie frowned a little. “You gotta get back?”

She bit back a smile at the question. She didn’t want her to leave, either.

“If I promise not to sabotage any engines, think I can stick around and wait?”

The grin was back, the anxiety gone.

“I think we can work something out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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